City Research Online

Abstract

There is currently a lot of hype about a phenomena known as web 2.0 or social software and not a day goes by when there isn’t a new story about the social networking site Facebook (http://www.facebook.com/), or a company buying space in Second Life (http://www.secondlife.com/). Librarians and libraries are certainly no different and web 2.0 or ‘Library 2.0’ as it has been called, has been receiving considerable publicity recently. Even our professional body CILIP opened offices in Second Life and has been encouraging CILIP groups to set up blogs. There have also been a number of recent publications on implementing web 2.0 technologies in libraries, such as Phil Bradley’s How to Use Web 2.0 in your Library (Bradley, 2007) and Meredith Farkas Libraries and Social Software (Farkas, 2007).

A team based at the University of London and led by Dr Jane Secker at LSE’s Centre for Learning Technology, have spent the past nine months working on the LASSIE (Libraries and Social Software in Education) project to explore how social software might enhance the distance learners’ experience of libraries. The team includes librarians, learning technologists and archivists colleagues from the Institute of Education, the Open University, University of London Research Library Services and London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. This short paper will present an overview of the work of the project to date, as well as some initial findings about how these technologies are being used by medical libraries.

Publication Type:	Article
Additional Information:	© 2008 Royal Society of Medicine
Subjects:	Q Science > QA Mathematics > QA75 Electronic computers. Computer science Z Bibliography. Library Science. Information Resources > Z665 Library Science. Information Science
Departments:	Professional Services > Learning, Enhancement and Development

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